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German typographer Harald Geisler started a Kickstarter campaign to develop a computer typeface that mimics Albert Einstein’s penmanship.

Albert Einstein's handwriting provided the basis for a new font, developed by German typographer Harald Geisler. He plans to release it this year in time for the centennial of Einstein presenting his general theory of relativity.
(AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

Typographer Harald Geisler studied Einstein's handwriting in minute detail, seeking variations of each uppercase and lowercase letter in order to make the font appear more natural. (Christoph Boeckheler)

A detail from the original manuscript of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. The genius's handwriting was "very small, very regular," said typographer Harald Geisler. "Maybe not controlled, but everything is in order." (David Silverman / GETTY IMAGES FILE PHOTO)

A Kickstarter campaign launched by a typographer in Germany recently raised the money to develop a computer typeface mimicking the handwriting of Albert Einstein, the brilliant 20th-century physicist.

Harald Geisler, one of the font developers, said in his pitch that he liked to imagine “that when one uses Einstein’s handwriting as a font, a spark of his genius potentially could reflect in one’s own writing.”

Geisler and his collaborator, Elizabeth Waterhouse, began working on the font in 2009, producing a prototype. Now that 2,334 backers have kicked in $55,577 (U.S.), Geisler will continue to refine and improve the font, hoping to release it before the end of 2015, the centennial of Einstein presenting his general theory of relativity.

The idea for the Einstein font arose out of a challenge between Waterhouse and Geisler as they sat in a café in Frankfurt, where they live. There was a reproduction of handwriting on a napkin, but it was uniform. Waterhouse, who trained as a computer programmer while studying physics at Harvard, wondered aloud if Geisler could create digital handwriting that appeared more lifelike. She suggested emulating Einstein’s penmanship.

Geisler, now 35, began meticulously studying the writings of the genius, particularly documents and letters he wrote around 1920, when he was in his early 40s and quite prolific. Einstein’s penmanship was very neat and legible.

“His handwriting is very small, very regular,” said Geisler. “Maybe not controlled, but everything is in order. He likes to keep things in order. I think that is also his relationship to math. When you work on a formula, in the end you want it to be beautiful, and so this is also how you want your pages to look. They should be beautiful.”

Geisler said he looked for five variations of each letter in both uppercase and lowercase. He would magnify the letters on a computer screen and, with a digital pen, trace and retrace the movements that were used to create them. He said getting that sense of how Einstein’s hands moved was crucial as it allowed him to then produce symbols such as the @ sign — something Einstein didn’t use — in a manner he believes is true to the scientist’s penmanship.

“I turned off my own esthetic instincts,” said Geisler, who has created 28 fonts, including another based on the handwriting of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. “It took a while for me to understand I had to take letters that I don’t find pretty so it’s more representative of his handwriting. I don’t just pick the beautiful ones; I picked the ones that are average or representative.”

It was important to have a variation in letters, Geisler explained, because that is how people write.

Many of the celebrity fonts available today have only one version of each letter or symbol. Geisler’s plan is to expand the Einstein font so that five alternative versions of the same letter are swapped in and out during typing; the end product, with all its variations, will appear more like Einstein’s penmanship.

Geisler says people will be able to purchase the finished font — his Kickstarter backers have already received the prototype — but he has no idea how they will use it. A Brazilian backer has already had the Einstein phrase “To keep your balance, you must keep moving” tattooed on his leg in the handwriting of the physicist. And a British company, Carousel Lights, created a limited-edition neon sign of the word “genius,” the way the genius himself would have written it.

As for the possibility that a little bit that Einstein brilliance might rub off on someone using the font, Geisler likens it to leaving your house dressed in your fanciest clothing instead of sweatpants and a sweatshirt.

“You stand a little differently and people act a little differently towards you. It’s like putting on a mask and becoming someone else, a disguise,” he says.

“It doesn’t make you a better person — the white shirt or the font you are using — but it can inspire you a little.”

The designer said his next font will be that of a woman, someone he could imagine sitting at a table having a discussion with Einstein and Freud. People have suggested Marie Curie or Marie Antoinette, but he said it will be a North American whose identity he won’t yet reveal. First he must acquire the rights from the woman’s estate. In 2014, he received permission from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which holds the rights to Einstein’s intellectual property, to proceed with the Einstein font.

The irony that handwriting fonts on computers are growing in popularity at a time when the art of handwriting is being eroded — largely because of computers — is not lost on Geisler.

He would like to see people be more connected to how they write, whether they are using a pen or a keyboard.

“I can imagine a future where people get taught in high school how to make their own font, how to turn their handwriting into a font, and, as they grow, they continue to refine it,” he said. “That’s one image of the future I have that I would find very beautiful. Yes, we would lose writing with the pen, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a more interesting or better or more exciting way and a new way to deal with writing.”

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